Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

‘ [227] why I should reject the co-operation of those who are more deeply interested, though they make no pretension to evangelical piety.’

Those who have sought to belittle Mr. Garrison's part in the abolition of slavery, have found nothing novel in the ‘severity of his language.’ But whether a real, and whether a good or a bad title to distinction from his predecessors, for this he had gone to jail, and for it he was now obliged to listen to the remonstrances of those who¹ most nearly sympathized with his objects, and whose profound faith in the purity of his motives furnished him the means to shock them weekly in print. Towards them he could be patient, but not so to an anonymous correspondent who had been pestering him with some crude advice:

Everybody is opposed to slavery. . . . O yes! there is² an abundance of philanthropy among us: the difficulty is, we have too much, instead of too little of it. . . . There is nobody to reform (except the reformers)—here lies the difficulty. Further: I conceive it no part of my duty, as editor, to prove that the holding of slaves is criminal. I take it for granted that slavery is a crime—a damning crime: therefore my efforts shall be directed to the exposure of those who practise it.

The public shall not be imposed upon, and men and things shall be called by their right names. I retract nothing—I blot out nothing. My language is exactly such as suits me; it will displease many, I know—to displease them is my intention.

Here I must advertise, that further advice will be considered intrusive. I do not want it. I want more leisure from manual labor, in order to do justice to the cause—I want a larger periodical that will enable me and my correspondents to appear before the public without crowding each other.

There is an apparent inconsistency between the terms in which gradual abolition is condemned in the Salutatory, and the phraseology of a petition to Congress entreating emancipation in the District of Columbia, printed beside the former on the first page of the Liberator. This petition,—which is introduced by editorial surprise at ‘many of the professed enemies of slavery . . . ’